Bruce Shaefer pointed this out weeks ago - it is an automated spammer that we cannot keep from creating accounts but that we have prevented from actually spamming the forums with the extra security question at login.

Warren

Yes, the spammers are out in full force these days. I get about 4 spams a day to equipment manager @ ncrocketry or volunteer @ ncrocketry. The world seems to think our club needs purple little pills and so forth.

Think Monty Python - SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM. However, I have noticed that the occasional Forum post comes up missing in the past week or so - maybe we've been infiltrated by conspiracy theorists looking to subvert Wordsmithing.

Yes, the spammers are out in full force these days. I get about 4 spams a day to equipment manager @ ncrocketry or volunteer @ ncrocketry. The world seems to think our club needs purple little pills and so forth.

Joe, you have clearly mis-read this. They are trying to say our towers and launch pads are too short.

Actually, from a safe distance, the towers and rails do look kind of small.

Yes, the spammers are out in full force these days. I get about 4 spams a day to equipment manager @ ncrocketry or volunteer @ ncrocketry. The world seems to think our club needs purple little pills and so forth.

Hey, do they seem to be a pretty good deal?
Maybe we could get a group discount. 😉

Think Monty Python - SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM.

I was thinking the same thing! I can't get that song out of my head everytime I think about this post...

So, we are over 1700 now and some of the new members have names like "haveabiggerdick.com". Can you make it were all new members need to be aproved manualy? I am not a computer guy but maybe if there is one out there with an idea, let us or Warren and Jerimiah know.

James, I'm not computer guy either, but my e-mail address on this site is an alternative one, and I haven't received spam... or any e-mail on that one. So far, we're safe. 😉

I get two to four little blue pill emails a day..... You better knock it off Scott. 😛 Joking.... about Scott...

So, if we go to an approval process, will it just cut down on the false membership count? Is the new security code keeping them from getting our email addys or what will?

My spam emails have been coming to the email addresses that are published on the site - like in the volunteer sign up section or equipment manager section. I bet Warren gets them as webmaster at ncrocketry as well.

I'm pretty sure that if you are just posting on the forum then your email address is invisible to any invaders.

My point is, who is all these members and why are they a member of this forum? I would bet that there is less then 500 people here in CO that are flying with NAR or TRA and have been to or are going to NCR launches.

There is an automated program, probably many of them, that crawl the web looking for sites built with PHPNuke - the software that runs this site - and automatically creating new users. While we can prevent those user accounts from posting, we cannot prevent them from being created. Guess it will have to wait until we can upgrade to the latest version of PHPNuke. It causes no problems except for the spurious user accounts, so it isn't high on the priority list to resolve. Jeremiah and myself are keeping an eye on things and eventually when we upgrade we will strip the spurious accounts and in fact, all user accounts that haven't been logged in to in over a year and we'll be back down to a more reasonable 300 or so.

Warren